


New Lamps for Old

by unveiled



Category: Princess Series - Jim C. Hines
Genre: Canon Queer Character of Color, Character Study, Character of Color, Gen, Implied Violence, POV Character of Color, POV Female Character, Queer Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-08
Updated: 2010-07-08
Packaged: 2017-10-10 10:58:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/98996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unveiled/pseuds/unveiled
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not a habit if done out of necessity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	New Lamps for Old

**Author's Note:**

> Talia-centric genfic with canon romantic interest. Takes place between _The Stepsister Scheme_ and _The Mermaid's Madness_. Contains **canon-compliant implied violence**.

It's not a habit if done out of necessity.

Once in every dozen dignitaries' parties, a good table knife disappears into Talia's jacket. An arrowhead of unusual design disappears from the mast of a ship. An assassin's dagger. Swords left by the now-dead slot themselves into the rack by her fireplace.

Talia spins and swings the blades in her hand, testing their grip, their balance. The wooden headboard of her unused bed is cratered with knife-marks, the odd arrow or two. She'd asked Snow for the least useful book in the library for target practice, but Snow had looked at her with such horror, she still counts herself lucky to have escaped with a shouted lecture.

Snow doesn't entirely understand this, the annihilation of any possible trust in a world that believes in life and boundaries of the body. Queen Rose Curtana was the one mirror in which Snow sees the reflection of the worst of the evils of her world -- the one being, named and known -- not generations upon generations of a family and anonymous human faces waiting at the door with orders to kill her.

Talia runs a finger down the blade of her latest acquisition and sets it aside. Good metal, but the pommel glitters with too many jewels and the balance is slightly off. It will have to be melted down, reforged into a true weapon. Snow's snowflakes are the daughters of the sword of a princeling, their design inspired by the throwing spikes one of Talia's late teachers had brought home to Arathea from her travels.

She wonders if this strange land considers it bad luck to present a dagger to Danielle as a gift. With the sword-fighting lessons halted in the last months of her pregnancy, Danielle needs more than a little luck and some magic.

Talia pulls out a willow basket from under her bed and, frowning, lays out her knitting to study her progress: not much, and perhaps a baby jacket isn't the best present for a boy sure to be showered with enough fineries to clothe him until his fifth year. Talia sighs and unravels her work, winding the yarn methodically into a ball.

She picks up another half-finished garment. This one's for herself, a vest made of good sturdy wool. It's been on the needles for a good two years now, but life as Queen Beatrice's personal guard and spy isn't conducive for finding more than the odd hour or two to work in a few rows. Talia draws out a small cloth pouch from under the wool skeins; untying it, she sorts through a small bundle of miscellaneous fibre and picks out a pinch's worth of pale silk threads.

She takes little things here and there: a bit from the tassels of a favourite scarf, a torn strip of cloth from a dress meant to be a makeshift bandage. No hair, no blood, nothing that can be easily used in magic. Just pieces of fabric and fibre no one will miss, enough to weave into the vest as she knits.

Twice in her life, she's had to run with little more than the clothes on her back. Keepsakes and children can be put out of reach or stolen, swords can be lost, but now that she no longer sleeps, to take what's close to her skin is a little harder -- though not impossible.

Talia flattens the new rows of knitting against her lap. The silk from Snow's old hair ribbon barely shows. She gives a little _hmm_ of approval to the solitary room, and continues knitting.

 

**END**


End file.
